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The usual cadre of scientists who disproved previous findings are stumped

If you were ever wondering where you'd be when NASA announced peer-reviewed evidence hinting at extraterrestrial life - long dead, if it existed at all - look around, because this is it.…

Analyst Ben Thompson, commenting on Apple's outlook following the launch of the iPhone 17 lineup: Apple, to be fair, isn't selling the same sugar water year-after-year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies. Their sugar water is getting better, and I think this year's seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products -- I definitely plan on getting new AirPod Pro 3s! -- the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates. That didn't matter for a long time: smartphones were the center of innovation, and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe. Now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery, and I think that, more than anything, is what bums people out: no, Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world.

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Nearly 100 requirements laid down by 10 separate oversight and advisory groups leave agencies tangled in red tape

The US government wants AI in every corner of government, but the unstoppable force of new tech is running into the immovable object of bureaucracy - a growing mass of AI rules.…

The narrative podcast industry that exploded after Serial's 2014 debut has largely collapsed. Pineapple Street Studios shut down in June after producing hits like Missing Richard Simmons. Amazon dismantled Wondery in August, laying off 110 employees less than five years after acquiring the studio for $300 million. Spotify terminated Gimlet in 2023 despite paying $230 million for the company in 2019. Major outlets including Pushkin Industries and This American Life have conducted layoffs. Talk shows and celebrity podcasts continue growing while investigative audio series struggle to find funding. Edison Research reports 55% of Americans consumed podcasts last month, but advertising dollars are flowing to cheaper chat formats rather than resource-intensive narrative productions.

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Classes moved to VBA, but upgrading and testing is unavoidable

With the end of Windows 10 looming, Microsoft has reminded hard-pressed admins that other critical technologies are on the endangered list, notably VBScript.…

NASA: After a year's worth of scientific scrutiny, the 'Sapphire Canyon' rock sample remains the mission's best candidate for containing signs of ancient microbial life processes. A sample collected by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken from a rock named "Cheyava Falls" last year, the sample, called "Sapphire Canyon," contains potential biosignatures, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before a conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life. "This finding by Perseverance, launched under President Trump in his first term, is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars," said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. "NASA's commitment to conducting Gold Standard Science will continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars' rocky soil."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: South Africa's energy regulator apologized for a 54 billion-rand ($3.1 billion) error in calculating electricity tariffs, a mistake that will be passed on to consumers. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa, which determines what state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. can charge for electricity, announced the miscalculation last month, without providing further details. On Wednesday, it put the blunder down to a "data input error" that was picked up by Eskom, according to a presentation to lawmakers. While the mistake had been identified before the tariff determination was made in January, it wasn't rectified as indicated at the time, and only discovered five months later, the regulator said. "The error is regrettable; it should not have happened," it said. The incident brought into the spotlight South Africa's surging electricity prices and will result in them increasing by 8.76% in the next financial year, instead of the 5.36% originally agreed, and by 8.83% the year after, compared with 6.19%.

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Systems offline as specialists continue to comb through wreckage

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says "some data" was affected after the luxury car maker suffered a digital break-in early last week.…

Britain's road death rate has declined 22-fold per mile driven since 1950, dropping from 111 deaths per billion miles to approximately 5 today, according to new analysis from Our World in Data. Annual road fatalities fell from 5,000-7,000 deaths in the 1920s and 1930s to 1,700 in recent years despite a 16-fold increase in vehicles and 33-fold increase in miles driven. The UK now ranks among the world's safest countries for road travel at 1.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Key interventions included mandatory breathalyzer tests in 1967 that reduced drunk-driving deaths by 82%, the introduction of motorways beginning in 1958, conversion to roundabouts that cut fatal accidents by two-thirds, and 20-mph speed zones around schools. If global road death rates matched Britain's current levels, approximately one million lives would be saved annually from the current 1.2 million road deaths worldwide.

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New look for Visual Studio but the core still runs on the old .Net Framework

Microsoft has released a preview of Visual Studio 2026, the first major version update since 2021, promising deeper AI integration and a new look and feel.…

Netflix's film division faces a fundamental mismatch between its subscription model and filmmakers' artistic ambitions, according to new data analysis examining a decade of original productions. The streamer's movies cost two to three times more than A24 films but consistently score lower across review aggregators. Netflix attracts established actors like Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz but struggles to retain acclaimed directors. The typical Netflix director has less critical acclaim and shorter filmographies than theatrical counterparts despite handling larger budgets. Directors recently turned down Netflix's $150 million for Wuthering Heights and $50 million for Weapons, accepting lower offers from Warner Bros. that guaranteed theatrical releases. The Electric State cost Netflix $320 million in February 2025 and received a 30 Metacritic score and 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. Netflix's business model requires filling hours to justify $9.99 monthly subscriptions. Directors seek theatrical releases where audiences watch films in one sitting without checking phones.

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Researchers at the University of Tubingen have discovered that human brains process colors in remarkably similar ways across different individuals. The team used fMRI scans from 15 participants viewing various colors to train a machine-learning model that could then accurately predict which colors a second group was viewing based solely on their brain activity patterns. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the study found that specific brain cells in the visual cortex consistently respond more strongly to particular colors across all participants. The discovery challenges long-standing philosophical questions about whether people perceive colors differently.

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Arbitrarily inflated lock-in-tastic fees curbed as movement charges must be cost-linked

Most of the provisions of the EU Data Act will officially come into force from the end of this week, requiring cloud providers to make it easier for customers to move their data, but some of the big players are keener than others.…

With extinction event predicted, Big Red's four-year forecasts will have to meet reality

Comment An industry adage has it that Oracle's calculator only has a plus button, which is reassuring for investors.…

Charleston's planned $1.3 billion sea wall will protect the city's historic downtown peninsula while leaving lower-income neighborhoods like Rosemont exposed to rising waters. The eight-mile barrier, with Charleston contributing $455 million, excludes historically Black communities already experiencing regular flooding. Meanwhile, developers have received approval for thousands of new homes in flood-prone areas, including Long Savannah's 4,500 units and Cainhoy's 9,000-home development on filled wetlands. Charleston's sea level rose 13 inches over the past century and faces another four-foot rise by 2100. Climate Central projects 8,000 residents and 4,700 homes will face annual flooding risk by 2050. The Bridge Pointe neighborhood already underwent FEMA buyouts after successive floods, while coastal South Carolina zip codes report among the nation's highest insurance non-renewal rates.

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Why strap pricey, power-hungry HBM to a job that doesn't benefit from the bandwidth?

Analysis Nvidia on Tuesday unveiled the Rubin CPX, a GPU designed specifically to accelerate extremely long-context AI workflows like those seen in code assistants such as Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, while simultaneously cutting back on pricey and power-hungry high-bandwidth memory (HBM).…

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Darwin Awards are being extended to include examples of misadventures involving overzealous applications of AI. Nominations are open for the 2025 AI Darwin Awards and the list of contenders is growing, fueled by a tech world weary of AI and evangelists eager to shove it somewhere inappropriate. There's the Taco Bell drive-thru incident, where the chain catastrophically overestimated AI's ability to understand customer orders. Or the Replit moment, where a spot of vibe coding nuked a production database, despite instructions from the user not to fiddle with code without permission. Then there's the woeful security surrounding an AI chatbot used to screen applicants at McDonald's, where feeding in a password of 123456 gave access to the details of 64 million job applicants.

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Prosecutors claim Ukrainian ran LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Nefilim ops – $11M bounty on his head

A Ukrainian national faces serious federal charges and an $11 million bounty after allegedly orchestrating ransomware operations that caused an estimated $18 billion in damages across hundreds of organizations worldwide.…

Department dangles £160K salary for CDIO to wrangle legacy systems, failed projects, and £1.8B budget

The UK Home Office – a government department with a rich track record of failing IT projects – is on the hunt for a chief digital and innovation officer (CDIO) with an advertised salary not far off from the prime minister's.…

One parent expressed concern for their child's safety

A clumsy data breach has affected hundreds of children at a Birmingham secondary school.…